A lost civilization. Matt, I think we both love these stories. Bring it on, let's talk about it. In the Grand Canyon. That place is incredible to behold. And when you see those crevices deep down in the earth, and you just imagine, could somebody have existed down there for safety for one reason or another thousands of years ago. Oh, my brain just reels. Dude. Yeah, And this is a question that a lot of people were asking, and for many decades there was a real belief that a civilization had originated, grown, and then died somewhere deep in the canyon. What's the truth? How do we figure out where this story came to be, and how do we separate the fact from fiction? I guess we listened to this episode from January twenty eighteen. From UFOs to Psychic Powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained defense. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is no. They call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer Paul Deckett. Most importantly, you are you, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know have you guys, ever been to the Grand Canyon? Yes, I feel like that was right at the same time. It was, but it wasn't a jinx because we didn't say the same thing. You're right, You're you're so right. Yes, I have been there. Have you been there been? Yes? Yeah, excellent. Yeah. What did you do on your travels? Yeah? Me too. Um, that was not a yes? And yeah, yes we did, yes, and I will, I will play these reindeer games. Travel there on a family road trip, as a lot of people do in the United States, was completely amazed and beflummixed by the sheer scale of the thing. And you know, when we fly out west in the course of our job, which happens a couple you know, it happens on a non uncommon basis, then we usually fly over the Grand Canyon, and on a good day you can see it. Yeah, and from up there it looks amazing. It looks like kind of the photographs, like a little miniature version of it. And you it's hard to understand truly how vast this area is. And did you go on a family trip as a child. No, I went with some friends. We had a wonderful time. Did you trip acid. I did not, though I probably wouldn't do that anyway. Did you ride a bureau? I did not. I literally stood at the precipice on one of the rims and just looked out for about an hour. Probably South Rim, right, yeah, it was. South Rim is the easier, the easiest to access. Just a little bookkeeping. We do have another guest on the Today's Show, and it is called construction noise, So hear that occasionally. We're not gonna just we're not gonna pause the recording. We're gonna barrel right through. But just FYI, we want you to know that you're not crazy. And we hear it too, yes, which I think is an important thing that people should say more often when there's a weird noise around. So, Matt, when you took this trip with your friends, first off, it does sound way cooler. No offense to family, but I think a friend road trip is probably just on average, more fun than a family road trip. They were essentially my family too. Nah. Oh man, it's true, And I believe you, you know, I believe you and you and your friends had the right idea. In fact, every year, more than four million people visit the Grand Canyon National Park System just not me, not yet, but hey, we'll get there. Man, you want to go to the Grand Canyon. Maybe you want to do like a friend trip to the Grand Canyon down? Are you in? Yeah, we can do a space camp as long as we can write a donkey. Yeah that is a thing. I'm not making that out. But you have to book it way in advance, no time like the president, my friends. So where did this canyon come from? Let's talk about what it is today. Most people living in the US have a pretty solid idea of what the Grand Canyon is. It exists in so much folklore, so many tropes, it's referenced all the time, and physically it's huge. It's kind of tough to miss. It's in the northwest corner of Arizona and it's near the borders of Utah and Nevada. It's managed by the National Park Service and several tribal organizations who have an historic claim to the land. It's divided into the North Rim and the South Rim. When we go on a road trip there, we'll probably go to the South Rim because it's open all year and about ninety percent of the parks visitors go there. The North Rim is apparently spectacular. It's closer to Utah, but it's much less exc Yeah, it's one of the craziest things about this. It takes roughly five hours to drive the two hundred and fifteen miles or excuse me, three hundred and forty six kilometers between the South Rim where the villages there, to get to the North Room. It takes that long five hours and if you think, if you look at it on a map, it does not seem like it should take that long. And you have to be very careful when you travel to the North Rim because it closes during winter. Yes, yes, it's very true. So how did how did this thing get here? It's been around a while, right, Well, the general consensus from the scientific community as of the Grand Canyon was formed by the constant erosion of the Colorado River, and that started somewhere between five to six million years ago, way way way back. It's a golden oldie. Yeah cut, yeah, I guess the Grand Canyon is literally a deep cut. Oh well, you win this round, Ben Bolin. I didn't know we were we were playing. I feel like we all lost for letting that joke pass or not. The war recent research may upend the notion of the canyon forming all in one go and at the same pace. That makes sense right over the same span of time. In fact, the Grand Canyon might have been the result of two separate canyons converging. That's interesting. That makes sense because of the way erosion works, right, So if there were two canyons that just eroded continually, they sort of grew into each other. Yeah, I mean that sounds like that doesn't sound crazy, not at all. No, And it's like two slightly less grand canyons, you know, kind of joining their forces and forming a much grander canyon. That's correct. So let's let's hit some numbers really fast just to get this whole scale thing under under a microscope lay at all. Even though you couldn't ever fit any of this under a microscope. It would have to be a very big microscope, a massive one. A macroscope if yeah, a macroscope. The Grand Canyon is two hundred and seventy seven miles long, two hundred and seventy seven miles long, and it's up to eighteen miles wide at any point. At several of the points, it's the largest, and it's more than a mile deep. If you're talking about the surface level at the top all the way down, that's a mile That is hard for me to fathom. It's and again we're talking about erosion here. It's just over time, five six million years, just all that water, all of the weather, the sand, everything, the rocks, just getting weather down and weather down and weather down, weather down till you're a mile deep. And what type of rock are we talking here, Well, there's a couple of different kinds. We've got sandstone, We've got an old favorite shale, one of my personal favorites, limestone. Yeah, yeah, all the good ones, all the hits. That's only sunny in Philadelphia. Reference that I probably shouldn't explain on a family show. And we owe the If we were to write a thank you card to something responsible for the Grand Canyon, we would probably send that card to the Colorado River, right which has worn this down. It's one thousand, four hundred and fifty miles long. And I'm sorry, Matt, I didn't check the kilometers on that one. And it goes through seven US states, two Mexican states. That's the lay of the land, this very long river, this huge canyon that's a mile deep do we do we already mention how many acres it covers total? No, we did not. Let's let's just do the number. One million, two hundred and eighteen thousand, three hundred and seventy five roughly acres. Well, Matt, that's the finest number reading I've heard in my days. It's a huge number, that number of acres. If you think about you know, if you're going to buy a house anywhere near a city, you're going to get about point two five to one acre, I mean one Do you want to buy the whole canyon? Matt? No, I'm just saying if you imagine that amount of space and then multiply it by that number, Wholy Mackerel and people. It turns out, have been living in the area for quite a long time. As we record this in twenty seventeen. Current archaeological evidence suggests that humans were in the Grand Canyon as far as four thousand years ago, like a permanent residential kind of situation. But before then, at least six thousand, five hundred years ago, they were visiting the Grand Canyon checking it out, going, whoa, I mean it sticks out, yeah, markeable thing. Can you imagine just happening upon that and just like you're, you know, a daily walk. Yeah. I wonder too if when people were doing that, if the weather would change, you know, if you're walking from a long distance. Oh, man, I bet you're right, because it's so massive that it could even have impacts on like air pressure and all kinds of different variables that could be perceptible, especially thinking about the flat arid land that you'd be walking to to journey upon it and just go, oh, what happened here? You know, some being God or whatever, what have you created? This? Cool? We should at least set something up here. And who is the first person to get to the bottom and then back up without dying? I feel like there were probably a couple of people who got to the bottom and didn't make it back. Yeah, Like this was a really bad idea. Yeah, I guess we're going to start a village down here now and today, this era, this group of human inhabitants is referred to as the ancestral pueblo of the Basketmaker three era. In archaeology, you'll often hear them refer to as the Anasazi, although the modern pueblo and people do not They don't really truck with this name because the word Anasazi is Navajo for either ancient ones or ancient enemies. And today people are still trying to figure out exactly when this distinct culture emerged. But the point is that there have been cultures there for a very long time. Evidence suggest that these Inner Canyon dwellers were part of Desert Culture, a group of semi nomadic hunter gatherer Native Americans. They inhabited the Rim and the Inner Canyon. They survived by hunting and gathering, along with a little bit of agriculture, but not a huge amount, and as you could probably tell by the name, they were noted for their basketmaking skills. Yeah, they lived in these little small communal bands inside caves, which makes a lot of sense if you think about the structures around there. What would give you shelter? And they made these circular mud structures that they called pit houses or are now referred to as pit houses. And then through further refinement of agriculture and some technology as it's being developed, it led to a more sedentary, more stable lifestyle for the ancestral pueblos starting around five hundred CE, so that's when things start to change a little bit from the hunter gatherer into not close not what we would imagine as being a sedentary life, but getting closer to that. And there's this other group called the what is it the Coonia. They lived west of the current side of the Grand Canyan village that part of the south room if you're imagine you're looking at a map, and they lived there around the same time that these ancient Pueblu people were living. And you know, we know civilizations rise, the civilizations they also do tend to fall, especially ancient ones. And archaeological sites show that the ancestral Pueblo and the Coconina flourished only until about twelve hundred CE. That's because something likely happened one hundred years later that forced both of these cultures to skidaddle. Several lines of evidence led to a theory that climate change what's that caused a severe drought in the region from twelve seventy six to twelve ninety nine, and that forced these agrarian people cultures to move on to greener pastures. Yeah, you can't get any crops to grow here. Our animals don't have enough food. Let's get out. Yeah, and we should point out, you know, a lot of this is about the timing of their move into an increasingly agriculture focused Society's that's typically what we see happening in cultures around the world. Right a hunter gatherer, you grow some crops, domesticate some animals, etc. There's a curious gap here in the record because it turns out that, as Nul pointed out, this drought occurred and people's get addled. And this is droughts are one of the reasons, one of the common reasons behind a lot of civilizations in decline, like angor Watt suffered from a drought which led to, you know, the loss of the city's population. And in the case of the Canyon, what we find is that for about one hundred years after people left because of this drought, just no one lived there. Yeah, we have to wonder why we're people just telling their kids that place sucks. It's for the birds. It could have been thought maybe there was some kind of curse or you know, something that was occurring there that was unnatural, the sort of sala It's possible. I mean, you can imagine that being a word of mouth tail. Sure, so for thousands of years other than this one, this gap for about a century. There's been a continual inhabitants, right, There's always been some sort of human population there, primarily Native Americans who built settlements within the canyon, and as Matt pointed out, it's many caves. The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon a holy site. They made pilgrimages to it, and of course, at some point a European quote unquote discovers it. Yeah. Yeah. The first European known to have even viewed set eyes on the Grand Canyon was Garcia Lopez Decardenias from Spain, and he arrived there in fifteen forty, so he was a little late to the party, but when he discovered tend to be. But you know, hey, he found it and put it on a map somewhere, good guy. And fast forward to the present. That's a quick and dirty look at the past of the Grand Canyon. But there's still mysteries in the present day. As we've covered in earlier episodes, people disappear in public parks way more often than you might think. Yeah. I don't know about you, guys, but I was stunned to discover that there is no federal database tracking these people. Yeah, it seems like there probably should be. Even if it was, even if it was just shorthand somewhere or a single Google doc that would be that would make a lot of sense. But no, and people forget the United States is very much a wilderness. We have these vast swaths of unoccupied land, right, no roads, no cities, no cell phones, etc. We do have wilderness here, and thankfully a lot of it is protected. Otherwise, you know, commerce would probably find a way to swoop in and bulldoze a whole lot of it. Yeah, but it's the wilderness, dude. Anything could be out there, It's true. But I mean, you know, it can be tamed by combines, geese or another thing that has absolutely nothing to do with this episode. But I think is interesting is the habit that a lot of companies have of buying access or buying land that has a water source on it and then taking that water and making bottled water. Yeah Nestlie, Yes, exactly like Nestlie. It sounds like some evil Doctor Soda scheme to me. Yeah, totally is. And the Grand Canyon is no different from a lot of these other wild areas. They're challenge trails, you know, Um, Nola is not joking about the burrow. It's a real thing. Uh. There's tremendous isolation in parts of it, right, Like can you imagine some for some reason being stuck at the North Rim in winter. It's not just a borrow, right, it comes with a guide, Yes, someone who really knows the lay of the land, and we'll you know, guide you on this, uh this donkey ride down these steep passes and and hopefully you know, get you there alive. You are excited about this, Well, I'm into a manly want a book, Yeah, let's book. Okay, let's go. So you're talking about these these mile long or mile depth areas which you know are really scary, Like you're talking about you've also got the Colorado River which is just rapidly flowing down below you in most of the places where you're going to be visiting and climbing. Absolutely, and we also know that these they're going to be disappearances, injuries, and deaths due to natural causes, right, But there are some things that are little more sinister, and we have to admit that. Yes, over time, several people have likely been murdered in the canyon. Some might remain undiscovered today. It's just gigantic. It's worse than a needle in a haystack situation, especially before the invention of GPS. Yeah, if you think about the number of people over time that will visit any certain point in the Grand Canyon, that isn't some of the most trafficked numbers are going to be really small, absolutely, And I mean think of all the neat, tuckaway kind of spots on the way down too. There's probably little caves and areas that would be harder to get to. And if you had a really good sense of all this stuff, you could probably hide a body pretty easily. That's a really good point. You're right, we should go In nineteen twenty eight, we have an example. Sorry, we have an example. In nineteen twenty eight, these Idaho farmers named Glen Hide and Bessie Hyde traveled six hundred miles along the Green and Colorado Rivers in this huge wooden boat, a sweet scow. The boat was found intact, they found the couples food, their diary, their guidebook, clothing, the gun. And it was forty six miles from the mouth of the Grand Canyon. But the honeymooners, oh yeah, I should mentioned they were on their honeymoon were never found, and ever since, Glenn and Bessie Hyde have been the focus of campfire stories and at least four maybe Glenn's and Bessies appeared or sighted in later years and over these legends of this miraculous escape. But that's just one example. That's just one example of something that still remains officially unsolved. And if you look by the way, I just want to say, if you look at the sweep scow boat, it looks like something that should not be going down rapids in a river. It looks like this wooden I mean large, like the shape of a boat, a big boat with two humans on it that look away too small compared to the boat to be going down a river like that, with rocks like giant, huge boulders just kind of sitting there in outcroppings. That sounds like Glenn and Bessie Hyde may have signed up from more than they were ready for. Well, they had, they had done it before, apparently like they were a pretty seasoned right they had. I think they'd done some rafting and wyoming. Yeah, they've done things very similar, so I think they expected it to be okay. Because there's no like Bunny trail in the in the Grand Canyon. I mean, it's like you said, one side is a little easier to access than the other, but overall it is some pretty punishing terrain. Yeah. True. And you're probably asking us and maybe yourself, you know, Matt Noel, super producer, Paul Ben this is interesting. But why are you telling us about the Grand Canyon that this is all the setup? Yeah. All we've been doing now is setting up the actual episode because today's twist, you see, it's not about a normal disappearance of a couple, tragic as it may be, nor is it about the disappearance of individ jewels. Today's story instead is about the disappearance of civilization. And today's question is there a lost civilization in the Grand Canyon? And we'll dive right into that after a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. What if there really was some other, unknown to modern history, unknown to you and I listening to this right now, some ancient civilization that called the Grand Canyon home, that was their way before any of the proven civilizations that we've discussed, the ancient Pueblos. What if it's been there all along, someone just had to discover it. Yes, what if not not just some kind of like city of ghost city of dead hikers, but like ancient forces, right, like what has it been the Hopie the Keeper of Death? Yes, yes, the Keeper of Death is said to reside in the Grand Canyon. Have not independent all You got to do a slip on a rock and you will meet him. Oh yeah, he's in a hurry. The Hopie Keeper of Death is waiting for you. They just don't put it in a lot of the brochures, but they're out there. And according to newspapers, the Hopie believed there was an earlier iteration of civilization in the canyon. They believed that their ancestors once lived in an underworld until dissension rose between the good people and the bad people, which they described as the people of one heart and the people of two hearts, and this conflict led them to leave this underground paradise. And the just this legend is really cool to look into. It gets complicated quickly with the different types of people how they're described, and you'll see people that we'll talk about a little later, like David Ike, who are ascribing things maybe differently to them than I would ascribe to what I have read. But you get into thoughts of lizard people here. You get into images of other otherworldly humanoids right right, whether they are purported to be purely folklore, whether they are purported to be you know, ancient extraterrestrials or some sort of parallel sapient species that existed along with Homo sapien. I love this though, this kind of mythology of the Grand Canyon being almost like a gate to the underworld or a passage into the afterlife. That is cool. Yeah, man, I keep harping on this, but it's a mile down and that is deep. You're getting close. So nowadays, although we have a wealth of facts and information about the Grand Canyon, we don't have the same sense of it that people had back in the day. Like in the eight nineteenth century, the Grand Canyon was this fascinating, mysterious and very dangerous thing. US residents were stunned by the Formation, and to be honest with you, a lot of readers, especially in the early nineteen hundreds, would have believed any number of strange things about it. They're probably not going to go right. They probably only have a few newspapers that they read, right, and they their chances of meeting someone who traveled there are much lower than our chances of meeting a Grand Canyon visitor would be today. Yeah, it's the thing that Ben talks about a lot on this show, where the cost of communication back in the day, as well as the cost of transportation. When you add those two things together and you're talking about the early twentieth century, it's exactly. I'm just meaning to reiterate it. You're not going to get to the Grand Canyon unless you have the means. And now it's like the Internet is democratized like information in such a way that like everybody knows everything, not everything, but like they have access to it if they so choose to seek out said information. Absolutely, Pandora's jar is open for better or for worse. So we looked into this because we had we had received several emails and correspondencies. Do I see correspondencies? I think so? Yeah, cool, while we're going with it, we received several messages from you and your fellow listeners who asked us to look into these stories of a low civilization in the Grand Canyon. And one thing that was profound to us is we deal with a lot of hoaxes, just in the nature of our research, and we like to think we have an okay nose for determining what's fake or determining what's real. Noel and Matt are both audio and video experts, so they are able to They're able to look at a picture and say whether it's a it's a fuzzy light, or if it's actually something spooky, able to analyze audio. People back then didn't have that benefit. But I was totally not expecting to find real newspaper articles. That's what I should say, you know what I should say. At the top, I thought I was going to find a bunch of fake stuff. That by fake, I mean like something someone made in twenty thirteen that day to look like it was made in that time, not like the fake news of today. I guess kind of like that. Yeah, But like about the Grand King, it required a lot more effort to do it back then, though we had You had to really like go through with your paste and you had cut out stuff and do a real good job. Today people could just write bullcrap on the internet. It's it's true. And in this instance it was an actual newspaper, The Arizona Gazette, and it published an actual story that ran in the paper. Was it was published, it was printed, it was sent out to readers. It was a series of stories. Yeah. A March twelfth of nineteen nine, the Arizona Gazette reported that an explorer by the name of Ge Kincaide. Please keep that in your mind, because we'll get back to Ge. They said that he was traveling alone or along the Colorado River and he had discovered profound, previously unknown architecture and artifacts inside a vast series of caverns within the Grand Canyon. This is in the early nineteen hundreds, Yeah, nineteen o nine, so unlike I mean Indian, Native American artifacts were very much unknown quantity, right, yeah, so unknown, Like what are we talking about? Right? He? Uh? Would The implication in the story is that they were clearly not from any known Native American source. Interesting. Yeah, we're gonna get into a lot of that stuff. But the big question that I had immediately upon reading this is, all right, who is this mister Kincaide. Ge Kincaide, fellow. I'm glad you asked, because we know very very all about him, other than that he came from Lewiston, Idaho, and according to the Arizona Gazette, he had worked as a scout for the Smithsonian for over thirty years. Oh that's okay, all right. He was. Also when you read newspapers from this time, the things they choose as descriptors and the way that they prioritize information just seems really weird. One of the few facts we know is that the Arizona Gazette said, Gee Kincaide is, in addition to being a scout for the Smithsonian, the first white child born in Idaho. I just have to say that is the first thing that they say about ge Kincaide in the article. That's how they introduce him, Geek and Kaide, the first white child born in Idaho, the first white child that's in Idaho. That is what is printed on the page. And also, I knowho seems like one of the whitest places in America to me today, I got wow, Ida, who knew? But I guess you know, you're talking about western expansion and all that stuff, so well, I guess it's his fault. Yeah. Also nineteen o nine, Yeah, I know, really it just seems like that's so funny. Yeah, it's it's a weird way to describe someone. Yeah, you know. So Additionally, he had spent time traveling down the Green River and he was noted as carrying a camera unspecified type of camera, but some sort of camera, and the initial article in the Gazette prompted a series of expeditions by people who were seeking the answers for themselves as well as wealth and buried treasure. So if you're a scout for the Smithsonian, you're not even like the ones actually taking the pictures they're going to publish. You're just going out there and identifying spots for the real photographers to come back out there knowing that it's safe and then take the real pictures. Right. I bet you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe he was expendable. That's why they sent him down the Colorado River. They literally sold him down the river. He was a red shirt. Yeah yeah. Wow. So there's a lot that we haven't unpacked about this yet, and it's pretty crazy. It's we're gonna get into stuff you're asking about, Noel. The first thing we have to really think about here is tracking these sources, Like where where are we getting the information? Where's the Gazette getting its information, and you know, the Gazette itself. Yeah. So, according to the Gazette, again a real newspaper, the exploration was being directed by the Smithsonian, specifically by an anthropologist there named sa Jordan, Professor sa Jordan, And apparently Kincaid was well known in these circles. They paint him as sort of an Indiana Jones type, very much so. And in the article Kincaid talks a little bit about the location of the cavern system. Yes, he said it was in the Marble Canyon region. You can look that up if you'd like to, but we are just gonna read it passes from the article here, the cavern was described as being quote nearly a mile underground. Okay, that kind of checks out. About one thousand, four hundred and eighty feet below the surface. The main passage had been delved into to find a mammoth chamber, from which radiates scores of passageways like the spokes of a wheel. Several hundred rooms have been discovered, reached by passageways running from the main passage, one of them having been explored for eight hundred and fifty four feet and another for six hundred and thirty four feet. This is amazing. How would you have accessed this like the from the grant from the canyon, because that's all open to the sky, so it's for it to be underground. Does that mean you would have to go into like a cave and then go down through a passage and so yeah, here's here's my issue with this whole thing. So the entrance is about one thousand, four hundred and eighty feet below the surface, so we have to imagine the surface would be top of the Grand Canyon, right, and then go down that much then you get to the entrance and then nearly a mile underground from there. I don't know. Perhaps these two things are being described as the same, not just trying to picture. This is amazing though, and go on, what what what did he find? Yeah? What's in there? Well? They found numerous artifacts from some ancient unknown civilization, articles which have never been known as native to this country, and doubtless they had their origin in the Orient. Wall weapons, kappa instruments shop edged as hard as steel, indicate the high state of civilization reached by these strange people. The people. Sorry, there was also this Buddha like I would describe it as Buddha like statue which sits with its legs crossed like in a almost like a meditative, meditative pose, Yeah, with a lotus flower or a lily in each hand, and that that description is very um. That description is meant to further their argument that these seem to be somehow asiatic and extract Well, it even is quoted as saying, quote, the cast of the face is oriental. Unquote. Well, what the devil were they doing here in the canyon? I don't know they were. According to the article, um, the scientists are not certain as to what religious worship it represents. It is possible that this worship most resembles the ancient people of Tibetan. Tibet It sounds very Tibetan, doesn't mean. Among the other other finds are vases or urns and cups of copper and gold, made very artistic in design. And we know that using the term oriental is incredibly racist. Yes, and that's why that's just kind of lopping it in with the whole white child thing. But the steel weapons, the lotus flower holding, you know, Buddha figure, this all really does sound like stuff that would have been around, you know, in Asian cultures. Well sure, yeah, and it sounds amazing, and you can imagine why this article being printed caused so many people to want to get out there and like find that stuff. Oh man, I'm gonna be rich. And that's the that's the big question. Why was this so important? What happened next? We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. So I hope everybody had a good break. We're going to look at why this was so crucial and so important, why it means such a splash, And probably one of the best ways to do that is with an excerpt from the gazette directly discoveries which almost conclusively prove that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern heune and solid rock, by human and was of Oriental origin Cringe, possibly from Egypt, tracing back to Ramseys. If their theories are born by the translation of the tablets engraved with hieroglyphics, the mystery of the prehistoric peoples of North America, their ancient arts, who they were, and whence they came will be solved. Egypt and the Nile and Arizona and the Colorado will be linked by a historical chain running back to ages, which staggers the wildest fancy of the fictionist. Wow, well done, and I love the idea of using fictionist as ancientist. You sir, let's do that. Can we make that happen on this show? Yeah? And then we slap them with a glove, yes, yes, bite our thumbs, all right, we have to get gloves. Paul, are you in? Yes? Okay, he's not one hundred percent, but he's gonna he's gonna go along with it. He gave us a glove thumb up right. So this excerpt shows something that we have seen before in different cultures. You know, when European explorers found ancient African cities, if you know, they tried to write it with their preconceived ideology, their framework through which they saw the world, which unfortunately usually meant them going, ah, yes there's evidence of white people. But they called it civilization as a euphemism. But let's be clear, that's what they meant. They meant like something that was closer to what they thought of as society, which was European. And you can read a lot of criticism for stuff like ancient alien theory that we've talked about before, and stuff like claiming to find a laws civilization in One of the tent poles of this sort of criticism is saying that the people who believe that or argue it despite the evidence are actually unconsciously or consciously, they're devaluing the work and the existence of the people who were really there. So we can't we can't read this and not recognize that on some level, the implication here is like Native Americans are not as good as you know us the first white child and Idaho. Speaking of the first white child in Idaho, though this story has sort of a spooky stories to tell him the dark esque kind of twist. It's either that or it just means the whole thing was a hoax. But whatever the case may be, the Smithsonian have no record of either ge Kincaide or his supposed supervisor, the professor sa Jordan Gas. Yeah, there's no records, So that can mean a couple of things. Yeah, either it really is an Indiana Jones style explorer and maybe maybe Essay Jordan's as pops, We just don't know that, maybe that's his dad and Sean Connery style. Yeah, yeah he was kidnapped. Didn't told Indiana no. But but but really, if we look into it, the Smithsonian spokespeople have asserted that quote, no Egyptian artifacts of any kind have ever been found in North or South America. Therefore, I can tell you that the Smithsonian Institute has never been involved in any such excavations. So so our primary source here is still just this gazette article, this Arizona Gazette article that identifies these people with their as having an affiliation with the Smithsonian, right, and the later series of articles they published because ge kincaide for a guy who doesn't exist went on a couple of adventures. Oh yeah, but we know, you know, journalists get stuff wrong. But that's that's a that's a doozy to get that kind of that level of attribution completely wrong, don't you think. Yeah, So, just to go back, either they did get some attribution wrong or this these two guys got wiped out of the record for some reason, or they didn't exist. Maybe it was a back to the future type scenario where they were sort of ghosted out of existence by their actions in the ghost tunnels. We do know that we've run into this in the past. We do know that there have been multiple beliefs or theories that paint the Smithsonian Institution as villainous. Oh yeah, like they're stealing ancient or irregular skeletons and hoarding them for some reason and then denying their existence and then just not telling anyone. That's interesting. Lots of other ancient human artifacts that are allegedly being you know kept. Yeah, and to be like kind of like the first game in town down as far as like cataloging and getting all of this very priceless stuff. You know, some corners got cut, and some people probably did some things they weren't proud of. I don't know. I would never accuse the Smithsonian of doing anything like that. Don't comin any place, at least for this episode. Yeah, man, I hope you know what, if someone from the Smithsonian is listening and there is any sand to that, yes, please come at me. I want that to be true. I don't think it is. I just personally I have a really tough time believing that the Smithsonian is up to something villainous. But I do completely agree with Noel's point that in the past they probably did some stuff. That's all I meant. Yeah, yeah, I mean the Smithsonian is as a storied history and the stuff that they have that they have preserved. It's around and you can see in there are many museums and publications. It's all priceless to you know, human culture and civilization and the preservation of all that stuff. But you know, the wild West man, when you're like going on these expeditions and sending out scouts and all this stuff, who knows what good goes down in the wilderness. And they hadn't dealt with the ethics of taking things from other cultures, right, And that's still sort of a problem. But we that's still a huge problem. That's sort of a problem. But we do know that the Smithsonian has done amazing work preserving culture as well. Oh absolutely, And I'm being completely facetious about saying the Smithsonian's gonna come get me. No one ever expects the Smithsonian. Yeah, that's very true. But let's get back to the article itself and just discuss if you're gonna post something in an Arizona gazette, you're going to publish a story. Sure, as a reader reading that, you're not exactly going to have the time or perhaps the money, as we spoke before, to go and independently verify what's being said in this story to fact check it not like today, especially in nineteen yeah, nineteen one. Come on, you, you know, think about how inconvenient that would be for you. If you're just a Matt Frederick reading the Arizona Gazette just opening up on the Sunday morning and going, oh, well, look at this incredible, you'd most likely write a letter to the editor if you wrote to anyone. So we can imagine the Gazette received a ton of inquiries about this information. But we have to ask ourselves what happened? Yeah, right, If the Grand Canyon is such a popular site now, as we said at the top of the show, over four million visitors a year, and if it's been extensively covered by surveillance right in terms of scouts going out, physically, park rangers, GPS, satellite imagery, if there's something there, how is it still hidden? Is this hidden history or a hopeless hoax? It is a very illiterative day. Well. The host of Skeptoid, which is a great podcast, Brian Dunning, summed it up as such. Quote, these stories were not just isolated pranks or whimsies in regional newspapers, not even fads or trends, but we're emblematic of much broader cultural currents. The American Romanticism and Transcendentalism movements were at full bore, rejecting the corruption of modern society and yearning for the perceived purity of ancient Eastern cultures, of which Egyptian and Tibetan were among the most revered. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so how did get into the paper? How did pass muster? You know, just one person as editors? Yes or no? Yeah, some hippie. We got to get readership up, guys. It's first quarter nineteen oh nine. Papers. They aren't getting bought as much anymore. People are buying them for that dime over in the diner. We gotta get more readership. Put that, Put that Green Canyon story page one. Yeah, nobody wants to lose out to the Tombstone Pickaune. It's true. Main rival. I made that up. But there are people who will tell you that there is a cover up a foot particularly writer known as John Rhodes known as John Rhodes because that's his name, not to be cryptic about it. He claims to know the exact location of the caverns, and the site is guarded today, according to him, by a loan soldier carrying an M sixteen, and that the caverns are actually a museum for the shadowy cabal that runs civilization. So, okay's a bit of a fringe writer, shall we say? Right? Yeah, just let's just quickly talk about John Rhodes. If you go to the website reptoids dot com, that is where he does a lot of his writing. You know, it's a It's a person who's doing a lot of research and has an outlet to write about it and has some very interesting ideas. I have not spoken to him, But here's the thing. I have not been able to locate this any quote that is close to what is being said here, because that what Ben just read was from a Gizmoto article. And again I cannot verify independently that he said anything about shadowy elites and caverns and a lone M sixteen carrying guy that guards it. But wow, that's a cool idea. And where are you telling me earlier that David Ike has a connection with this? Yeah, the book that you put on our Instagram, Ben, The Biggest Secret, the nineteen ninety nine I think guest book that was written by mister Ike. It connects the Grand Canyon discovery, specifically this one, the Concaid discovery with the Reptilian overlords. Like we were talking in the beginning, like perhaps this is where they started or one of the places where they landed, or one of the places where they arose from. Yeah, and you can see this the connective tissue of these various fringe theories stretching out right in either direction. And with that, we do have to say that at this point it does not seem as though there is some sort of non Native American law civilization in the Grand Canyon, unless it is being so well covered up and protected that we just don't know about it. But why, maybe it's like a place to worship the lower ones. My favorite tidbit in all of this is the idea of the Grand Canyon being this gateway of the underworld that fascinates me and captivates me more than the hidden civilization stuff. Personally, I'm really into this idea of a shadow museum, like a top secret evil museum. I want to go. I mean, I guess if there's not one like that already, I'll just eventually build one, right, Yeah, someone should so we do know that the odds are right now that there isn't some sort of low civilization at least in the Grand Canyon. However, these rumors, these hoaxes, these beliefs, do not come out of thin air. In the modern era, our species has discovered cave dwellings that radically redefine what we thought we knew about the course of humanity. Here I'm thinking specifically of go Beckley, the Turkish cavern system. Yes, oh man, that really changed things there, Like you said, been there're been numerous versions of this. Even if you look at some of the cave paintings that we've discovered over the years, you discover you realize that humans have been around for much longer in places that we didn't think they existed at the time, right And for in the case of go Beckley Tepe, it wasn't even excavated until starting in the nineteen nineties, and people were there from the tenth to eighth millennium BC. So there are still things out there in the ground waiting to be found. And we've talked before about the technology that is aiding in the search, and we also talked just a little bit about this is a wild theory, but it's completely plausible about how some countries don't want old sites to be found because then they're responsible for preserving them, reconstructing them, guarding them. Yeah, and it's a huge drain, could be a drag even like those an ESCO Heritage sites and things like that, that can be prohibitively expensive for places that don't have a whole heck of a lot of money. Yeah, unless you're talking about NGEO or a nonprofit or something, you're going to spend tax dollars on that. And also, the majority of the time that someone rediscovers an ancient site, they've put a lot of work in And I'm not dinging the people who've done this work, but the majority of the time what we see is that native populations or people who've lived in the area for a long time, we're already somewhat aware of something. Yeah, you know, so we know that in our lifetimes and probably the next few years, they are going to be more discoveries. We don't know exactly what or where they will be, but we do have questions for you. Do you think there's any kind of significant undiscovered ruins or structures that exist deep in the Grand Canyon. Somewhere maybe in the middle of the canyon, about half a mile down, there's an cave entrance that's extremely hard to get to. Do you think that exists right to us? And where in the US have you heard of other alleged sites of law civilizations? Speaking of you? That reminds us it's time for jah Conna. Our first shout out comes from Kathy. Kathy says, how about looking into what is being labeled the Bama boom. It is occurring in other locations as well. The ones located around Alabama are just getting some of the best average. Thanks. And this is another one of those things where it's a mysterious sound. In this case, it is literally a boom. And you can find a Fox News article that discusses this mysterious boom that jolted part of the state. And apparently it's happened more than once. In this case, evidence pointed to a sonic boom from either an aircraft that was flying overhead or meteor some kind of explosion in the air. Also a delicious fruit flavored malt beverage. Yeah, ma'am, a boom. Let's look into this. Thank you for writing Kathy. We also have a message from Narison. I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, who says, FYI head rest in your car ar me to have pointed tips to break windows in case you're stuck or submerged with windows closed. And then he followed up, Yeah, he followed up saying it looks like that was an internet myth. Sorry for the misinformation. Fell into the conspiracy myself, but I saw this, and I mean, they are the little kind of pointy parts that go into the seat where you can pull the head rest off. The ends of them are apes very similarly to the kind of tool you would use to break a window. So whether or not it's intentional, and I certainly think you could use that to break a window possibly. I think the problem is when you are trying to hold that headdress and then hit the window, I think maybe there's a problem. They're in there are two, so your decree like having the amount of impact. I want the focus to be on a single point with one of those little hammers or whatever. Yeah, there's also a cool trick that you well, you'd probably never do it, but it's possible to break a window just using the resonance of a soft touch in a pattern. We're singing a particularly high note right, which is far out of my range. We have one more shut up. This one comes from Lena on Twitter tweets at us if you dudes are ready to start an adult Triple X space camp, I'm in and I probably know other Triple X ladies who are super interested as well. What does triple X stand for? Is it? Well, is it like the alcohol thing? Yeah, it's it's it's on my Alabama Canabama boom. Yeah. Yeah. The X does we talked about this owner interview of like A Yates. The X does indicate the number of times something has been distilled. Oh okay, yeah, exactly, superpotners so a, I guess just highly refined. Lena's talking about a highly refined space camp for adults. Okay, that's cool. I'm done with that and thank you Lena, Nearrison and Kathy. This concludes our but not our show, and that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three stdwy TK. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.